Wednesday, December 20, 2017

Eating your cake and having it, too: Bootle's Brexit

The dusty hills of the north coast of Cyprus and the Mediterranean. (Photo by the author)

I read a lot on Kindle. A lot. I probably download a book every single day. I like the Daily Deals for 99 cents, needless to say, so I check them every morning. This morning, there was a book listed called Making a Success of Brexit and Reforming the EU: The Brexit edition of The Trouble with Europe by Roger Bootle.It shouldn't take anyone with even two working brain cells long to figure out what's wrong with the above. First on the list is this self-evident oxymoron: leaving the EU and fixing it. Indeed, it is either impossible to do that, or a case could be made that the addlepated author is attempting to say that the EU will be reformed as soon as the UK is out of it. There might be some truth to the latter stretch of a concept; there is none to the former. Indeed, the EU probably will be better off with the UK gone; the infighting will end, and there will be no 'gimme' state demanding concessions as Cameron did--and got--right before he shafted the EU that had succored him by conducting his scurrilous and specious so-called referendum. Howver, to repeat, the UK can not FIX the EU if it is no longer a member.However, Bootle's readers seem to be as logic challenged as he, and as selfish and narcissistic as America's answer to Adolph Hitler, Donald Trump. One of those readers/critics who claims the book is great admits that he had spent his career living and working in several EU nations and now lives in Cyprus, and by gad, the EU is a dreadful thing and needs to be abandoned without delay.Really? I wonder how he thinks he was able to freely work all over Europe. I wonder if he realises that only because Cyprus--GREEK Cyprus--is a member of the EU can he enjoy his retirement in the sun in a country where most people speak at least some English. And which is peaceful. And offers decent public services. And where he can collect his pension and spend it where it won't do the native land he claims to love so much one particle of good.

As you ponder this ingrate's retirement in Cyprus while feeling leave to consign his (former) native land to the trash heap of history, please recall that Great Britain had subjugated Cypress--both Turks and Greeks--for a long time, only relinquishing it when the Turks and Greeks began killing each other, at which point Great Britain left them to their fate.

What was their fate? Ultimately, a divided island, with about 37 percent of it now claiming not to be Turkish Cyprus, but is actually Turkey, since the invasion by Turkey in 1974. Turkey-on-Cyprus STILL requires a UN peacekeeping presence.

Greek Cyprus is The Republic of Cyprus, and a member of the EU. It could not be a member of the EU unless it had met reasonable standards of life for its citizens and conduct for its politicians, something as likely in Turkey (and Turkey-Cyprus) as is Vladimir Putin giving all his ill-gotten wealth away to the nations his greed and malice and just plain viciousness have destroyed. In short, it ain't gonna happen.

But there it is; morons are claiming in print, which legitimizes it, that the UK leaving the EU can be successful (despite the fact that all but the most navel-contemplating Leavers are beginning to suspect they were sold a pup) and ALSO reform the EU. No, not possible

Of all of this, one might ask Mr. Bootle, why should you care, once the UK has left, whether the EU reforms itself or not? Indeed, it might be more effective for the UK's post-withdrawal comfort if the EU were to fail, leaving the UK some better global financial pickings than it is in line for at the moment.

Bootle claims fame for predicting the economic crisis when the inflated real estate market crashed. Mr. Bootle, if my cat could read and pay bills, he could have predicted it. Most adult humans who can read and pay bills DID predict it.Bootle writes for The Daily Telegraph, and owns a financial firm. Enough said. If you read this piece of trash, be aware that claims equality of treatment for both Leave and Remain, but is actually a rather clever polemic, designed to attract the uneducated and the jealous, to the idea that once the UK stops participating in the EU--the single entity that has kept Europe war-free for 70 odd years--they will be rich, happy, live in a big, overdone oligarchichal home like Trump's penthouse, and rule the world once again.

Ain't gonna happen. The opposite, in fact.But Mr. Bootle? He and the monkey-brained xenophobes and greedsters he serves will.

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Ranting, it is sometimes called. I prefer Op-Ed. Indeed, I never worked as an opinion page editor for a newspaper; I could never have espoused the beliefs of the management, but only my own. I have contributed op-eds to newspapers and online publications, notably BushWatch, which featured one of mine "above the fold" in its last-ever issue after Mr. Obama was elected.

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